Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
2/26/07
I vaguely
remember the 2001 arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who, for over 15
years, had been selling America's most classified secrets to foreign powers.
What I don't recall hearing anything about is the crucial role played in
the investigation by a young surveillance operative named Eric O'Neill.
The story of the fateful time these two men spent together is told in Billy
Ray's excellent thriller Breach, a character study about what it
takes to serve, and to betray, your country.
Computer
expert Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe) photographs and follows suspects for
the FBI. He dreams of becoming an Agent, and gets a step closer when
he's summoned to the offices of Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney). She
assigns him to be a clerk for Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), a Bureau veteran
who's running a new division designed to upgrade their computer security.
But Eric's real mission is to observe Hanssen, with the official explanation
that he's a sexual deviant whose activities could embarrass the government.
Tough, paranoid and deeply religious, Hanssen initially intimidates and
amuses his new clerk. But soon, he's taken in by his apparent sincerity
and the interest he and his wife Bonnie (Kathleen Quinlan) take in Eric
and his new wife Juliana (Caroline Dhavernas). But Juliana is not
nearly so impressed, making the Hanssens a source of stress in their marriage.
Not nearly as stressful, of course, as Kate's revelation that Eric's original
mission was a cover: what Hanssen's really suspected of is massive
levels of treason. And to catch him in the act, Eric finds himself
in the middle of the biggest operation in FBI history.
On
paper, there's nothing sympathetic about Robert Hanssen: demanding,
sexist, intolerant, bitter and unwilling to ever take “no” for an answer.
And that's before you know that his treason has cost America billions of
dollars and untold lives. Yet, as brilliantly played by Chris Cooper,
it's easy to see why Eric is drawn to him. He's been marginalized
and ignored by the intelligence community to which he devoted decades of
service and there's something appealing about the absolute certainty of
his marriage and faith. The clincher is how much he seems like the
end result of the career trajectory Eric is already on: O'Neill's
written and circulated a paper about potential surveillance reforms that's
been treated with the same disregard as Hanssen's suggestions. Cooper
does such a good job that even his betrayal makes a certain kind of sense:
he's only exploiting the same security holes he's railed against for decades.
If the Bureau doesn't want to fix the problem, he'll just prove how bad
it is. Further winning us to his side is the cagey casting of Gary
Cole as his slick superior Rich Garces. Cole, of course, defined
morally bankrupt management for a generation with his performance in Office
Space. As it continues, the movie piles on disturbing details
that muddy our picture of Hanssen, making it harder to know if we really
know him at all, or if he even knows himself.
Director
Billy Ray keeps things tightly focused on Eric, which enhances the suspense.
He's only a small part of a massive investigation, but none of those Agents
will be any help if Hanssen, with his trunk full of heavy weapons, catches
on. The certainty with which he views the world only makes the traitor
seem all the more dangerous, and Cooper seems to be wound so tight he could
kill with a sideways glance. There are several great setpieces where
the investigation seems about to unravel: one where Eric struggles
to remember which pocket of Hanssen's briefcase he stole his Palm Pilot
from, and another where he's got to delay the Agent's return to his car,
which is being searched by an FBI team, by any means necessary.
Even
beyond Cooper, the cast is strong. Phillippe keeps getting better,
and he excels here in a role as quiet as Cooper's is showy. Linney
is at her officious best, making a character who could have seemed like
an empty suit into a real person. And even though she never really
licks her character's East German accent, Dhavernas skillfully suffers
Juliana's discomfort in Hanssen's presence (in addition to giving me pleasant
memories of her short-lived TV masterpiece Wonderfalls).
What
surprised me after doing a little research is how closely the movie sticks
to what is known about the case. Before an end title telling us where
he is today, I half expected Eric to turn out to be a composite character.
I certainly expected to learn that he didn't really do most of what we
see, but it seems that he actually did, making the story all the more remarkable.
Thanks
to the plea bargain he signed, we'll never know what was really going on
in Robert Hanssen's head. The movie suggests that it doesn't really
matter, but for all the damage he did, I still felt sorry for him as Breach
ended. And I can't compliment Chris Cooper any more than that. |
